No Exceptions

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 56:1, 6-8 and Matthew 15:10-28.

Scrolling through social media today is like drinking from a firehose. You can nearly drown from all of the news, videos, links and ads that you are exposed to. On the one hand, you learn that they cured a person in New York of sickle cell anemia, that they have reintroduced beavers into Scotland, that there is a group of high school kids who volunteer as pallbearers for veterans who die without family, that AI was used to generate a bacteria-killing virus and that a man known for playing Santa in a small town in Virginia donated one of his kidneys to a stranger who needed a transplant. On the other hand, you learn that an Indiana councilman was arrested for child rape after being on the run for 2 years, that 2 middle school students were caught planning a robbery with homemade firearms, explosives and a tactical vest with white-supremacist imagery, that a popular actress was in an abusive relationship with a popular rock star that started when she was a teen, and that it seems that no one in our government can stop our government from doing bad things. C.S. Lewis pointed out that it seems that you can't say anything either bad enough or good enough about life. Why is that?

Jesus gave us the answer 2000 years ago when he was asked about why his disciples did not wash their hands before they ate. (Actually, it was probably not that they didn't wash their hands but that they didn't wash them in the elaborate traditional way that the Pharisees did. They washed from the fingertips to the wrist, then scrubbed with a fist, then rinsed from the wrist to the fingertips. There was no germ theory then; this was to cleanse you from accidental ritual contamination from contact with others you may have touched in the street or marketplace, or worse, from contact with Gentiles.) Anyway, Jesus responded by saying that it isn't what goes into the mouth that defiles a person but what comes out of the mouth. This offended the Pharisees and on the face of it, sounds disgusting. But Jesus explains that what really defiles a person is the evil things that come out of the heart. “For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” In the parallel passage in Mark, Jesus' answer includes greed, malice, deceit, envy, arrogance and folly. (Mark 7:20-23) All of these start in the heart, which was considered the center of a person's thoughts, emotions and will, and then they manifest themselves as evil words and actions.

There is a tendency in human thought to locate evil in something external to us. The Gnostics thought the physical world and even our bodies are evil. Only spirits are pure. For a lot of people the source of all our problems is “those people.” And those people can be anyone you don't like: gays, blacks, foreigners, Jews, the poor. “Those people” can be those who think differently than us: the Communists, the Republicans, the Democrats, Hollywood elites. Or it's a whole industry: Big Pharma, social media, tech bros, AI. If we just get rid of “those people” all of our problems would be solved.

But they wouldn't. Because all of those people and the groups they are in and the companies they run have one thing in common with us: we are all human beings. And if there is one Christian doctrine that can be objectively proved to be true it is that human beings are flawed. It's not just that we are limited in what we can do. It is that no mere human being is morally perfect. We are susceptible to doing the wrong thing. And while sometimes we may do it inadvertently or out of ignorance, other times we do it knowing full well that it is wrong and that it will harm us or others or our relationship with others. As Paul says in Romans, “For I don't understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want—instead, I do what I hate....I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil that I do not want!” (Romans 7:15, 19)

We've all been there. You are tempted to eat not one but a whole sleeve of Oreos, sabotaging your diet. Or, more seriously, you are tempted in the heat of an argument to say something you know will trigger an enraged reaction from your sibling, spouse or coworker. Or you are tempted to sleep with someone you know you shouldn't, though one or both of you are married and it could break up relationships and families. Or you have figured out a way to cheat a system, customer or partner. Or you decide to get a person to do something that's wrong just to see how much power you have over them.

Of course, there will be consequences. Some of these things are crimes, violations of the written laws by which society organizes itself to keep peace and make people safe. Some are sins, moral violations of how we should act. Not all sins are crimes and not all crimes are sins. Crimes have legal consequences. Sins have moral and spiritual consequences. They change you. They affect those around you. Read enough biographies and pretty soon you learn how important, creative and famous people, some of whom you may admire, have ruined their lives and those they purport to love without breaking any human laws. Charles Dickens, who wrote movingly about people dealing with moral issues in books like A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, and even a life of Jesus Christ for his kids, left his wife for a young actress, took his children with him and tried to have his wife put away in an asylum. Eugenics, the idea that society should eliminate negative inheritable qualities through selective breeding and even forced sterilization of “inferior people,” was supported by people such as Teddy Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, W.E.B. Du Bois and even Helen Keller, who succeeded in life despite being both blind and deaf. Eugenics was only discredited when the Nazis showed what taking it to its logical end would lead to. I'm sure you can easily think of any number of celebrities and leaders in business, politics and even religion who have been exposed for doing very bad things. All humans, Paul said, have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23) No exceptions.

Jesus came to save us from our sins, not only through redemption and forgiveness but also through spiritual transformation. Laws and moral rules do not make people good. The only way to do that is to change the person. In 2 Corinthians Paul says, “...if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; look, they have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) Being a Christian is about becoming more Christlike.

Which does make you wonder what Jesus is up to in the second part of our gospel reading. A Canaanite woman comes to Jesus asking for mercy for her daughter. Well, not so much asking as shouting. And we are told, “But he did not answer her at all.” The disciples are getting annoyed and tell Jesus to send her away. Jesus tells them, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Now if Jesus was just any Jewish man of that time, this would not be unusual. But just 7 chapters before we read that Jesus healed the servant of a Roman centurion. Surprised by his faith in Jesus' ability to heal without having to come and lay hands on the sick, Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their place at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 8:10-11) Jesus knows that Gentiles will be at the heavenly banquet. Shortly thereafter he heals two men in the largely Gentile region of Gadara. (Matthew 8:28-34) Jesus also healed Samaritans. (Luke 17:11-19) So why is Jesus being so standoffish with this Gentile woman?

Now Jesus was right in that his mission at that time was to Israel. But he foresaw a time when his message would go out to all the nations. (Acts 1:8) And as we see in Acts 10 even Peter was slow to realize that the good news of Jesus was also meant for non-Jews. Jesus may have been giving the disciples a chance to get a head start on what would be the next phase of their mission. (Matthew 28:19-20)

Yet the disciples' solution is to send the woman away. That was also their solution to the 5000 hungry people: “Send them away.” And Jesus told them, “You give them something to eat.” They had just returned from their mission to preach and heal. I think Jesus really wanted them to use the power he had granted them to feed the people. But in response to what he told them, they balked. I wonder if Jesus' uncharacteristic reluctance to heal this woman's daughter was also a test for them to do it themselves. But again, they don't do anything except complain.

They did not see that there is a pattern in God's plan. People who were originally excluded from being part of God's people are eventually welcomed as recipients of his grace. The Moabites and their descendants were excluded from the assembly of the Lord for what they did to the Israelites. (Deuteronomy 23:3-6) Yet Ruth, a Moabite, becomes the grandmother of King David. (Ruth 4:13-17) There was longstanding enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans. Yet Jesus, rather than avoiding their territory, went through it. He talked of spiritual matters to a Samaritan woman. She had also been married many times, something Jesus condemned. (Matthew 5:32) Yet she, and through her the whole village, came to believe Jesus was the Savior of the world. (John 4:1-42) Jesus even makes a Samaritan the hero of what is arguably his most famous parable. (Luke 19:25-37) Eunuchs also are excluded from the assembly of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 23:1) Yet the first foreigner to become a Christian will be an African eunuch (Acts 8:26-39) The pattern is clear: people once excluded from God's community later get included. As Peter says after being led by God to preach the gospel to a Gentile family, “I now truly understand that God does not show favoritism in dealing with people, but in every nation the person who fears him and does what is right is welcomed before him.” (Acts 10:34-35)

So I can only conclude that, like at the feeding of the 5000, Jesus was trying to get the disciples to do what was right on their own initiative. When they fail, he does it.

The Canaanite woman kneels before Jesus and says, “Lord, help me.” Jesus' reply, while jarring to us, was very much in character with Jewish sentiments at that time. He says, “It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.” And indeed Jews did compare the Gentiles to dogs, whom they saw as wild scavengers who ate anything. However Jesus does not use the word for full grown dogs but for little dogs or puppies, which Gentiles kept as pets.

The woman takes Jesus' words and gives them a twist. “Yes, Lord, but even the puppies eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.” Touche! And Jesus, who liked to flip the script on his opponents, appreciates how this woman turned his words back on him. I imagine he smiled at her retort. So he says, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that moment.

This reminds me of another difficult passage: God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham was about to do it when God stopped him, providing a sacrifice in place of Isaac. It was a very dramatic and memorable way to show that Yahweh was not that kind of god who demanded that of us (Leviticus 18:21) and that if a sacrifice was called for he would provide it. Which we see in how Jesus, God Incarnate, makes the greatest sacrifice by taking upon himself the consequences of our sins and the sins of the whole world, in order to open the way to reconciliation with God. Through Jesus we flawed human beings can become the people we were created to be: bearers of the image of the God who is love.

I think this encounter with the Canaanite woman was an enacted parable, like the sacrifice of Isaac. Jesus takes a situation in which the typical outcome, in this case the rejection of an outsider, looks like it is inevitable and then he changes it. Jesus lets us see that this foreigner, like the centurion, has placed great faith in him. She will not give up on getting Jesus to heal her daughter. And he rewards her persistence. And I'll bet he knew his disciples would remember and record this event when they later encountered others who were previously excluded from the people of God but who nevertheless put their trust in Jesus. God does not show favoritism. As he says in our passage from Isaiah, “the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants...” are welcome on his holy mountain. He says, “for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” The Bible's most famous verse says, “For God so loved the world...” Not just a part of it. Not just some of its people. God made us all. Jesus died for us all. He loves us all. So how should we respond? By loving him back. And by loving all the other people God made. No exceptions.